Lyon, France-based indie developer Little Worlds Studio said that it is "playing its last card" and "places its fate in the hands of the public" with the launch of an initiative to save the company through what it is calling a "Kickfailer." Unlike a "Kickstarter," this initiative seeks support through its already established free-to-play mobile game Mana Crusher.

The Fine Young Capitalists is looking for a few good women (or anyone who self identifies as a woman) to take part in its special Women In Video Games Initiative. To take part, would-be applicants are asked to submit a pitch document about a game idea that is right around 1,500 words in length.

The submissions will be judged by the community, with the top five best pitches getting some very professional treatment.

Here's something you don't see happen every day: a major video game, a prominent YouTube personality and a mega pop star all coming together to create something special. The ultra popular sand box world building game Minecraft got some mad props recently in the music video for Lady Gaga's hit song, "G.U.Y."

Lucas Pope's popular game Papers, Please took home the top prize at last night's Independent Games Festival Awards. In addition to winning the Seumas McNally Grand Prize, Pope's game was honored with awards for Excellence in Narrative, and Excellence in Design.

It is with deep regret that we report that Joel Green, the young child who is the inspiration for That Dragon, Cancer, has passed away. This heartbreaking news comes from the That Dragon, Cancer website and an update to Joel's personal website.

On March 12th, 1989, Tim Berners-Lee put forth a proposal to make information sharing possible over computers, using nodes and links to create a "web." While the CERN physics lab where he worked could not justify the project, his bosses allowed him to do the work there in his spare time. That little side project by Tim Berners-Lee became what we know now as the Internet.

A GoFundMe crowd-funding campaign has launched to raise money for games journalist Brandon Boyer, who was left with over $100,000 in medical bills after his insurance company Humana refused to pay them, using a "pre-existing condition" clause in his insurance policy. Keep in mind that Boyer's surgery, which saw part of his small intestine and liver removed, happened before the Affordable Care Act went into effect.

The winners of the National Coalition Against Censorship's ninth annual Youth Free Expression Project Film Contest have been chosen Winners will be flown into New York City for a screening event and an awards ceremony at the New York Film Academy on March 29. This year's theme, "Video Games in the Crosshairs," is of particular interest to those who love games because it asked contestants to make a video dealing with such issues as gaming, violence, virtual reality, and censorship.

Last weekend at Seattle Startup Weekend a team of developers and enthusiasts decided to create another Twitch-based experience similar to PokemonPlaysTwitch - only with a Pacman game re-geared as a massive 2-player game. One Twitch channel plays Pacman, while the other plays Blinky. Both channels allow viewers to input movement commands to keep Pacman away from Binky, while the other one inputs commands in the chat window to chase Pacman down and gobble him up...

Freddie Wong’s company RocketJump has successfully completed a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo with more than $900,907 raised during a month-long campaign to finish "Video game High School," a popular sci-fi series about competitive gamers who attend a high school all about video games. Wong was seeking $750,000, but the project proved to be so popular that it set a record for a crowd funded web series on Indiegogo.

Indie studio Fire Hose Games is offering developers displaced - or soon to be displaced - by layoffs from Irrational Games in the Boston area a place to hang out and get some work done free of charge. The Go Home Dinosaurs! developer said in a recent blog post that those developers who want to try and strike out on their own as indie developers can have a safe and free place to go while they get back on their feet.

Dong Nguyen, the 29-year-old Veitnamese indie creator of the popular mobile game Flappy Bird, said that he removed the game from both Google Play for Android and iTunes for iOS devices because he was deeply concerned that the game was too addictive. There has been plenty of speculation that Nguyen pulled the game because of legal threats from Nintendo (for using art similar to art found in the Super Mario Bros. series of games) or because he couldn't handle the pressure, but it turns out that - he claims at least - he had a lot of concerns about people playing his game too much.

A new Kickstarter campaign for Space Pioneer seeks funding to bring to life a game that promises to let players travel to the farthest reaches of the universe, explore new worlds, and colonize them. But the most interesting thing about this particular game is who is making it and why it will likely feature a high level of realism and real science.

The PC version of Minecraft has passed the 14 million copies sold mark, according to Mojang co-founder and game creator Markus 'Notch' Persson. Over the weekend Persson tweeted the latest milestone for his hit building game. That's up from the number of 13 million in sales by the end of December 2013.

Mojang also recently announced sales of 10 million copies of the Xbox 360 version and one million copies of the PlayStation 3 version. The PS3 version hit that impressive milestone after only five weeks of availability on the platform.

The "Father of the PlayStation" will finally be honored by the Game Developers Choice Awards for his accomplishments while serving as the CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment - bringing the masses Sony's very first home console and its subsequent iterations. Former Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Ken Kutaragi will receive a well-deserved Lifetime Achievement Award at the 14th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards.

A crowd-funding campaign has launched today on Kickstarter to fund Area 5's latest project - a documentary series called Outland on the people and culture of videogames. The details on just what aspects of gaming culture the series will cover is fairly vague, but the group hints at covering some interesting topics like game preservation efforts and movements, and eSports. Area 51 is made up of former 1UP personalities Ryan O'Donnell, Matt Chandronait, Jason Bertrand, Cesar Quintero, and Rick Curnutte.

Unity Games, developer Electric Eggplant and the Heirs of Rube Goldberg (the group representing the family members in charge of Goldberg's estate) have launched an Android version of Rube Works: Rube Goldberg Game on the Google Play store for $1.99 USD (€1.49, £1.29, AU$1.99).

The game is said to be inspired by and pays homage to the imaginative and crazy contraptions depicted in comics created by the Pulitzer Prize prize-winning American cartoonist, National Cartoonists Society founder, sculptor, author, engineer, and inventor Rube Goldberg.

With 17 days left to go before the YouCaring crowd-funding campaign to raise funds for Ron Nakada (the Senior Software Engineer at Blizzard Entertainment who is battling through Stage IV colon cancer) ends, it has managed to surpass it goal. As of this writing $25,664 has been raised from 678 backers.

Finalists for this year's Independent Games Festival have been announced. The list of nominees for the biggest prize of the show - Seumas McNally Grand Prize - include such notable indie games as The Stanley Parable (Galactic Cafe); Papers, Please (Lucas Pope); Don't Starve (Klei); Device 6 (Simogo); Jazzpunk (Necrophone); and Dominique Pamplemousse in "It's All Over Once the Fat Lady Sings!" (Deirdra Kiai Productions).

Chucklefish's procedurally generated space-themed RPG Starbound has sold more than one million copies thanks to its inclusion in the Steam early access program and the company's own pre-order efforts. Starbound is currently an early access game on Steam, allowing consumers to play an early beta build of the game while developers make wild and drastic changes. Selling for right around $15 via Steam's early access program, players have been enjoying the game since December 4.

Awesome Games Done Quick 2014, a week-long gaming marathon in which participants speed run through a number of popular games, hopes to raise money for Prevent Cancer Foundation, a nonprofit group that funds cancer research and educational efforts. In its fourth year, Awesome Games Done Quick 2014 takes place until January 11. Donations will directly benefit the Prevent Cancer Foundation.

Here's a pretty cool story from Gamasutra - and a particularly awe inspiring thing if you happen to be someone developing a roguelike game. Glenn Wichman, one of the original co-creators of the super popular 1980s dungeon-crawler Rogue, served as a judge on the "Ultimate Roguelike Challenge" competition.

Joe Danger and No Man's Sky developer Hello Games recently suffered a calamity when its offices were flooded. According to a recent series of tweets by the Guildford, UK-based studio, the damage it suffered in its offices on Christmas Eve are not covered by its insurance policy.

Recently the "Take This Project" was quietly relaunched as "Take This," along with a new website at www.takethis.org. Take This is a support group for gamers (though it doesn't specifically exclude those people who do not identify themselves as gamers), games journalists, game developers, and other industry professionals that suffer from depression, anxiety and other challenges associated with mental illness.

A 12-year-old who just happened to be up all night playing video games in Danville, Kentucky, is being credited with saving his entire family. On Thursday morning at around 3:30 am, Jaxxyn Wood was on the first floor of his family home playing video games when he smelled something funny in the air. Jaxxyn said that he "smelled something really bad, like Legos on fire."

Upon further investigation he noticed that the ice machine in the kitchen was on fire.

Harvey Smith's book, "Big Jack is Dead," has been honored as one of the Best Indie Books of 2013 (in the general fiction category) by renowned book review service Kirkus today. The book written by Smith (who is best known for his work on hit games such as Dishonored, Deus Ex: Invisible War, Deus Ex, Cybermage, and Ultima VIII) tells the story of an executive returning home to deal with his father's funeral and confront the past.

Inspired by the software patent trolling efforts of patent house Treehouse Avatar Technologies, a new IndieGoGo campaign launched today seeks to raise funds for a project that will ultimately help the little guy. The project is called Operation Ninja S.T.A.R., and seeks to raise $17,500 to closely examine a patent owned by Treehouse Avatar Technologies to see if there is any evidence that the invention existed prior to the patent application. Their ultimate goal is to render the patent invalid.

Kotaku offers a mildly amusing story about a game development studio that decided to pirate their own game. Vitali Kirpu and Alex Poysky, the developers behind Pixel Piracy, have "pirated" a copy of their own game, and provided a free torrent download on their site.

Wargaming sent out an interesting announcement this afternoon about seven men who climbed Mount Everest and "sort of" claimed it in the name of their favorite online game... Seven World of Warplanes players have tackled the treacherous slopes of the Himalayas and celebrated by planting a very special flag on its highest peak.

Shout box

Infophile: @Matt: Apparently Dan Aykroyd actually is involved. We don't know how yet, though, but he's apparently going to be in the movie in some way.08/02/2015 - 4:17am

Mattsworkname: I still hold that not having the origonal cast invovled in any way hurts this movie, and unless the 4 actresses in the lead roles can some how measure up to the comic timing of the origonal cast, i just don't see it being a success08/02/2015 - 12:46am

Mattsworkname: Mecha: regardless of what you think of it, GB 2 was a finanical success and for it time did well with audiances ,even if it wasnt as popular as the first08/02/2015 - 12:45am

MechaTama31: I think they're better off trying to do something different, than trying to be exactly the same and having every little difference held up as a shortcoming. Uncanny valley.08/01/2015 - 11:57pm

MechaTama31: Having the original cast didn't do much for... that pink-slimed atrocity which we must never speak of.08/01/2015 - 11:56pm

Mattsworkname: Andrew: If the new ghostbusters bombs, I cant help but feel it'll be cause it removed the origonal cast and changed the formula to much08/01/2015 - 8:31pm

Andrew Eisen: Not the best look but that appears to be a PKE meter hanging from McCarthy's belt.08/01/2015 - 7:34pm

Mattsworkname: You know what game is a lot of fun? rocket league. It' s a soccer game thats actually fun to play cause your A Freaking CAR!08/01/2015 - 7:02pm

Mattsworkname: Nomad colossus did a little video about it, showing the world and what can be explored in it's current form. It's worth a look, and he uses text for commentary as not to break the immerison08/01/2015 - 5:49pm

Mattsworkname: I feel some more mobility would have made it more interesting and I feel that a larger more diverse landscape with better graphiscs would help, but as a concept, it interests me08/01/2015 - 5:48pm

Andrew Eisen: Huh. I guess I'll have to check out a Let's Play to get a sense of the game.08/01/2015 - 5:47pm

Mattsworkname: It did, I found the idea of exploring a world at it's end, exploring the abandoned city of a disappeared alien race and the planets various knooks and crannies intriqued me.08/01/2015 - 5:46pm

Andrew Eisen: Did it appeal to you? If so, what did you find appealing?08/01/2015 - 5:43pm

Mattsworkname: Its an interesting concept, but it's not gonna appeal to everyone thats for sure,08/01/2015 - 5:40pm

Andrew Eisen: That sounds horrifically boring. Doesn't sound like an interesting use of its time dilation premise either. 08/01/2015 - 5:36pm

Mattsworkname: an observer , seeing this sorta frozen world and being able to explore without any restriction other then time. no enimes, no threats, just the chance to explore08/01/2015 - 5:34pm

Mattsworkname: Andrew: I meant lifeless planet, Time frame is an exploration game. Your dropped onto a world which is gonna be hit by a metor in 10 seconds, but due to time dilation ,you actually have ten minutes, so you can explore the world, in it's last moments, as08/01/2015 - 5:32pm